


Wild Wolves All Around

by sithwitch13



Series: Across the Stars and Fields [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-14
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:25:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sithwitch13/pseuds/sithwitch13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prequel/companion to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/221913">Across the Stars and Fields</a>. In April 1963, five children arrive into an unfamiliar world, six months after knowledge of mutants has become public knowledge. Contains a plastic spoon, Southern accents, a British telepath (but not <i>that</i> one,) friendly Quebecois, and a Morlock. Some spoilers for "A Song of Ice and Fire," particularly "A Storm of Swords."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Wolves All Around

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to finish and post this for months, but between NaNoWriMo, Yuletide, holidays, and general writer's block (Seriously, Bran and Jon, what did I ever do to you? Except for, you know, the end of ATSAF) this took longer than I'd wanted. Very belated thank you to anyone who has read the previous works in this series! I have two more entries in this before I consider it done, and the one I consider the cap will be up soon. Hopefully tomorrow.
> 
> The title of this fic is taken from a lyric from a Bob Dylan song, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." I'm on something of a Dylan kick lately.
> 
> Thanks to Vladdie for once again being a beta reader and thanks to Wing for trying to point me in the right direction for some Montreal resources!

_Arya_

There was no sense in being scared. Instead, she hated.

She’d gotten good at hating. She’d had a lot of practice since Winterfell. Hating here was no different than hating in Braavos, or in the Riverlands, or in King’s Landing, except that she didn’t understand the words yet. She tried the little bit of Braavosi that she knew, and the Common Tongue, but the first just got her looked at funny and the other got her taken away.

 _Fear cuts deeper than swords,_ she told herself when she’d woken up and found herself in a strange building on a strange street filled with strange people. Everything from their clothing to the way they walked was wrong.

She repeated it again, and again, when she saw a monstrous _thing_ moving on its own, and when someone grabbed her and shoved her in one even though she fought back and kicked and screamed, though her bare feet didn’t seemed to hurt them much. Again when it moved with her inside of it, faster than any cart, and she tried to fight her way out even so. _I could jump out,_ she’d thought, biting the hand of the man who tried to pull her from the door, as her own hands tried to push and scratch at it and she closed her eyes so she couldn’t see the outside blur by.

Again, when they put her in a strange little room and gave her different clothes to wear and asked her questions that she couldn’t understand. _Is there gold in the village? Silver?_ a voice whispered out of the past, and she almost shook until she clenched her hands into fists and remembered stabbing the Tickler, her knife going into him like he was a pudding, and if only she had a knife here.

They left her alone finally, and she slept again. In her dream, she was large and powerful, instead of small and scared, and outside instead of locked in. She could smell better than she could see, and there were such rich scents all around her. She lumbered through, seeing a man walking all alone and wearing a uniform like those who had taken her, and she acted like she’d wanted to in the horrible fast thing: she charged, bit, tore, ripped, and saw blood spraying and pooling, tasted it in her mouth, felt it on her face. It tasted like vengeance.

When she woke, she was in another room, with a mirror shinier than any she had seen before. She stood, examined it. It wasn’t beaten and polished copper or silver, and it was large enough to take up most of a wall. She looked terrible in it, her long face pale and dark circles like bruises under her grey eyes.

Two people, a man and a woman, came in and talked at her again. “I don’t understand you,” she told them, frustrated, in both the Common Tongue and her horribly accented Braavosi. One of them, the woman, held out her arm and motioned for Arya to do the same. Hesitating, Arya did, and they came at her with a gigantic needle with a metal tube attached to it.

She fought it, but they stuck her anyway, and her squirming ripped it out and her blood squirted in the man’s face, and she made it out of the door and down the hall before they brought her back and pressed a cloth with something horribly sweet against her face and she dreamed again.

Outside, she could see and smell the building, bleak and harsh like a rock among the surroundings. This time she merely watched, and enjoyed the freedom of the outdoors, running away from the bleak place. It didn’t last long.

When she woke, her arms hurt, and the crooks of her elbows had been bandaged. She peered at them suspiciously, but only pinprick-sized holes were left in the skin, and she pulled the bandages off, feeling clumsy with them on. They bled a little, but scabbed up and she had never cared about scabs.

They came back twice, both times bringing food. The first time she didn’t touch it, suspicious. _Stupid,_ she told herself after her stomach growled. _If they wanted to kill you, they could do it any time. And if the food is drugged, you might sleep and dream and be somewhere else for a while. At least you’ll be fed._ The second time they brought food she devoured it.

“Where do you come from?” asked a man with an accent so thick and strange that she could barely understand him. “What are you doing here?”

“Braavos,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

Except the man didn’t seem happy with that answer, and he kept asking it in different ways and he said that Braavos didn’t exist and all sorts of other things that didn’t make sense, so eventually she started yelling at him in her terrible Braavosi so that he wouldn’t understand her either and finally she just shut up and imagined that she had Needle back, and that she was shutting him up for good. Eventually he left.

There wasn’t much to do after that. She tried pacing. She tried sitting. She made faces at the mirror, puffing her cheeks out and keeping her face blank and all of the things that the kindly man had told her to do. Eventually, she slept again, dreaming that she was the bear.

 _I’m getting out of here,_ she decided. _I’m not a mouse. I won’t be trapped._ She wouldn’t yield to boredom, or to men with needles and poisons that made her sleep. When they next brought her meal, she took a chance: she snapped the spoon, made of some brittle bendable thing, and it broke into a sharp point that she could hide in the palm of her hand.

Arya tested it against her palm, feeling satisfaction as the jagged point bit into her skin. A little harder and she might be able to use it as a passable weapon, even if it wasn’t even so much as the finger blade that she used when she was Cat of the canals, wandering the streets of Braavos. She sat, waiting for someone to come collect the remains of her food, like they had before.

But they didn’t. Instead, she heard something. _Listen with your ears,_ she thought, straining to hear. Loud thumps, crashes, screams… all from outside. She stood, tested the door again, but it was still locked. She hit at it and sat back down, huddling in frustration.

Eventually, the noises stopped. The door opened, and she looked up to see a man in red and purple, a stupid helm on his head in the doorway. He spoke in that same stupid babble that they’d been speaking at her, and she _still didn’t know what he was saying._

 _Stick to the plan_ , she thought, and she jumped up, quick as a deer, and stabbed the man in the leg.

* * *

  
_Bran_   


Bran pressed his face into Summer’s thick fur, breathing in the thick familiar animal smell and closing his eyes, trying to block out everything else.

It wasn’t any use. There were too many strange sounds, all around, pressing in, and it was horribly hot. He had been bundled up in furs and thick cloth, and even though he’d peeled off what he could, it was too hot.

Summer panted, seeming to droop in the heat, too. Direwolves were meant for the far north, even further than Winterfell and the Wall. He couldn’t peel off his fur.

They were in the shade, for the moment, in the space between two large buildings. Bran had pulled himself over into a corner, and had tried warging into Summer to get a better sense of where they were, but this place _stank_. It was too loud, too overwhelming, and Bran pulled back into himself in shock. Outside of the alley, people walked in strange clothes and talked in a strange accent and things that smelled like burning charged by with no sign of horses or oxen anywhere to be seen. Bran never missed snow and quiet so much in his life.

He hid for a long time, lying on his stomach and trying to think, until he noticed that he was thirsty and that the line of incredibly bright sun was creeping closer and closer to him. If he stayed put, he would burn. Summer had dozed off, slightly away from him, stretched out in a massive pile of gray fur and still panting, and despite the terror of his first attempt, Bran steeled himself to try again. He would never be able to find his way out of here on his own.

Slipping into Summer’s skin was easy, and he reveled in four good legs and feeling more alive than he did in his own body as he always did, even though he was immediately assaulted by the smells and sounds of the new place. He pushed past it, clung to Summer, and stood, leaving Bran-the-boy behind in a sleeping pile like discarded clothes.

Bran had always before liked to just ride along, enjoying the sensation of running and hunting and _being_ the direwolf, despite Jojen’s constant admonitions to take control. This time, he found himself having to actively work at it, since if Summer had his way he would have hid in the shade of the alley and napped until dark came. He pushed past the oppressive heat, the barrage of noise and smells that made his stomach turn, and trotted out into daylight.

The smells were worse out here, and Summer tried again to shy back into the alley before Bran shoved with all his mind and forced him forward. He hadn’t even made it very far when he heard someone shouting. “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

Panicked, Bran made Summer return to him in the alley. He could hear the footsteps behind him and pulled back into his mind just in time to see men pointing something at them. “Don’t,” he croaked, his throat dry.

The lead man dropped what he was holding and stepped back. “Man alive, what’re you doing down there, boy? You coulda been killed.”

The man’s accent was thick and odd, but Bran understood _killed_ well enough. “I don’t know where I am―”

“Where your parents, son?” the man asked. “That dog o’ yours gonna bite me if I get too close?”

“He’ll stay back,” Bran said after a moment, even though he wasn’t entirely sure. Summer didn’t like it here.

“Sounds like one o’ them Europeans or somethin’, Wallace,” said another man. “Where you say you was from?”

“The North,” Bran said, unwilling to be more specific until he knew what was going on. Even if they thought he was dead, if Theon’s men were near and found out who he was―but what would they be doing here?

The lead man―Wallace―laughed and slapped his knee. “A Yankee. Hell. C’mere, boy, we’ll getcha to the po-lice and let them figure it out.”

“I can’t walk,” Bran said stiffly.

“Polio?” The man said something that Bran couldn’t hear and shook his head. “Keep that dog offa me an’ I’ll carry ya.”

The man stepped closer, but Summer snarled. “Git back,” the man snapped, raising his weapon.

“Don’t!” Bran yelled.

Summer darted out, catching the man by the leg and savaging it before Bran could warg into him and get him away. The other two men had started―what was that? The noise was horrible, and Bran shrieked back in his body, driven out by the surprise. He jumped without thinking into first one, then the other, then the third, and made them drop the weapons.

“What the hell did you do to me?” one asked, horrified.

“Carl, I think we need to be callin’ the po-lice right now,” said Wallace. “Hell, call in the damn FBI.” He stared down at Bran with revulsion.

Summer crouched in front of Bran, growling. Bran held on to Summer’s fur, wondering what the men meant.

* * *

  


_Sansa_  


_If I close my eyes, this will all be a dream,_ Alayne told herself. She closed her eyes, squeezed them shut as tightly as she could manage, even tried pinching herself on the arm, but when she opened them again, she was still in an unfamiliar room.

 _Petyr would be so worried if I were really here,_ she thought, huddled in the corner, _And Sweetrobin would cry._ She felt more relieved than upset about both of those, if she was being entirely honest with herself, which she couldn’t afford to be. She closed her eyes again and pressed tighter against the wall. _When I wake, I’ll laugh and say, “Oh, what a silly dream,” and I’ll still be Alayne Stone, Alayne Stone,_ Alayne Stone. _And I’ll be in the Vale…_ Her control slipped and she sobbed, choking and quiet, because it wouldn’t matter if she cried in a dream so long as she was Alayne when she was awake. In dreams, she could be Sansa Stark, and Sansa Stark had all the reasons to cry that Alayne Stone didn’t.

She heard footsteps outside, and it wasn’t the first time she’d heard footsteps in a dream. If the gods were good, the footsteps would walk past and let her hide and this wouldn’t be a bad dream. But the door opened, and she wrapped her arms tighter around herself and kept her eyes closed as tightly as she could. _Now it will be Ser Ilyn,_ she thought, _come to take my head, too._

“What are you doing in the closet?” asked a girl’s voice.

Sansa looked up, sight blurred through her tears, and saw a girl in the doorway. No nightmare, just a tall girl, with long dark hair and odd clothing.

“I didn’t―I’m only dreaming,” Sansa said.

“You dreamed yourself right into my house,” said the girl, amused. “And you’re thinking so loud it woke me up. Come on, then, let’s get you up.” She reached out a hand for Sansa, who took it and stood, brushing dirt off of her shift and trying to smooth out her hair. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“No,” Sansa said, still confused. “But thank you, my lady.”

The girl laughed. “That’s sweet, but it’s just Betsy. Betsy Braddock. So what are you doing in my house?”

Sansa― _Alayne_ ―shook her head. “I’m only dreaming,” she said again, her voice small and scared.

“You’re really not,” Betsy said. “Sansa―”

“Alayne,” she said sharply. “I’m Alayne Stone.”

“Right,” Betsy said, clearly not believing her at all, and Sansa flinched. She’d have to believe it better. Was she truly stupid enough that she couldn’t keep it straight in her head? Betsy’s face softened. “Well, whoever you are, you can’t be wandering around my house in that. My parents are out and my brother sleeps late on weekends, but sooner or later someone’s going to notice you.”

“Please don’t put me out.” Dream or not, being alone meant danger. Her stomach clenched and she nearly froze. She had never been able to defend herself, in life or in dreams, and the thought of it made her lightheaded.

“I’m not,” Betsy said in a rush, taking her by the arm and pulling her gently down a hallway. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that people will ask questions, and you’re dressed very… well, we don’t see people dressed like you around here. God, you’re not going to faint on me, are you?”

She didn’t trust herself to speak, so she shook her head and followed Betsy down the hall. “Good,” Betsy continued. “So, it’s incredibly obvious to me that you’re in a lot of trouble, if you’re showing up out of nowhere and changing your name. Don’t try and deny it, I’ve got…” She waved vaguely at her head. “It’s all sorts of trouble, but it’s occasionally useful. And you really are thinking _very_ loudly.”

“I―I’ll try to think quieter,” Sansa said, unsure.

“That’s all right,” Betsy said absently, steering her to a room. “Here we go. I should have some things that fit you. We can say you’re a visiting friend for the moment. Brian won’t care, Jamie doesn’t visit much these days, and my parents… well, I’ll think of something when they get back.”

“What’s going on?” Sansa asked, more than a little dazed, and fright beginning to win over blinding confusion.

“In the long of it, your guess is as good as mine. In the short of it, you need help, I’ve had dreams with you in them earlier this week, and I’m not going to throw someone scared and alone out on the street. So. Sansa.” Sansa flinched again to hear her true name, the one that was dangerous and for the moment forbidden, and kept her eyes on the floor. “As long as this is just a dream to you, why not just go with it? I promise my family’s nice.”

 _This is one of the nicer dreams I’ve had in a long time,_ Sansa thought. _And if it’s not a dream…_

“We can go shopping,” Betsy said, sing-songing it like a bribe. Sansa hesitated, not sure if she was being made a mock of or not. Betsy frowned. “I thought everyone liked shopping. Really, what’s wrong? You just shut down, like… are you all right?”

 _No,_ she wanted to say. _I haven’t been all right in a very long while, and if I’m dreaming that I’m in a strange person’s house then I might have gone mad finally, and if I’m_ not _dreaming, then things might be considerably worse._ “I’m fine,” she said faintly.

* * *

  


_Jon_  


It was warm.

Not overwhelmingly so, but after so long at and beyond the wall, Jon had grown used to waking up huddled under furs fur warmth with frost in his hair, cramped from shivering if the fire had gone out. This was pleasant. It reminded him of Winterfell. Of a life he’d given up.

Ghost panted beside him, silent as ever, red eyes moving. Jon reached a hand down to the direwolf’s shaggy neck, mostly for his own comfort. Even without the pleasant weather to tell him so, this was obviously not the Wall.

Instead of Castle Black and an enormous wall of ice, he was surrounded by unfamiliar buildings. People wore strange clothes. _They’d die on the Wall wearing that little,_ he thought, amused by the relative thinness of one woman’s coat. Had he somehow been transported south without being aware of it? Been drugged and thrown aboard a ship by plotters unhappy with having him as their Lord Commander?

Jon shook his head. He certainly didn’t feel drugged. He’d had milk of the poppy before, and remembered how waking after a heavy dose felt like moving through mud. He was clearheaded, if confused.

He looked out the broken window of the seemingly abandoned structure he’d found himself in, wondering at these people. He couldn’t see a single weapon, an odd sight after so long spent among the Night’s Watch and the wildlings. Peasants, then? Well-dressed peasants. Their clothing was bright, and looked finely made. He would stick out like a crow among songbirds, in his black leather and mail. And not a one of them wore a cloak.

He hesitated, running his hand over his own black cloak. He'd turned it once, under orders, and was still under suspicion from some of his sworn brothers who thought he'd turned willing for good. No. He wouldn't do it again. He slipped out of the building, looking for some idea of where he was.

Jon heard the buzz of an unfamiliar language around him, though he could read signs every so often in the Common Tongue. He tried staying in the shadow of the abandoned building, but must have drawn attention while craning out to read a sign across the way. A young man and woman, older than him but still young, paused and stared at him.

He stared back evenly, examining them as they did him. They were both black-haired, and alike enough that they must be siblings, possibly even twins. They wore the same manner of dress as the others he had seen passing by, and he could see no trace of weapons. The woman said something in that unfamiliar language, calling to Jon, and both laughed.

"She wants to know what museum you escaped from," the man called in the Common Tongue when it was clear Jon couldn't understand them. His accent was hard to understand at first, but Jon's scowl deepened when he understood that he was being made mock of.

"Where am I?" he called back.

" _Le Plateau-Mont-Royal_ ," the woman called, crossing the road toward him. Her brother followed close.

"I don't know this place," Jon said stiffly.

"Montreal?" the man said. "Your dog is huge. Does he eat people, or just whole cows?"

"He's a direwolf." Jon's fingers tightened on Longclaw's pommel. The man noticed.

"You probably don't want to be seen with that. You're calling enough attention to yourself dressed like King Arthur."

"Who's that?"

The woman giggled. "Jean-Paul, don't be an ass to the boy. I'm Jeanne-Marie, this is my brother."

"Jon Snow," he said warily. "This is Ghost." The direwolf regarded them solemnly.

"So if you're not from around here, where _are_ you from?" Jeanne-Marie asked, motioning for him to follow her.

Jon hesitated. "The Wall."

Jean-Paul snorted. "You don't look Chinese to me." His sister hit him lightly on the shoulder.

"I'm a Northman," Jon said, stung. "And 997th Lord Commander of the Wall. I'm needed back there."

"What you _need_ is a change of clothes and a hot meal," Jeanne-Marie said. "You're free to go anywhere you want after that."

#

True to their word, the Beaubier twins didn't keep him any longer than one meal. They were evasive about what they did but willing to give him spare clothes to help him blend, including a coat long enough to hide Longclaw effectively. He rolled up his black cloak in the worn knapsack they gave him.

Jon spent the rest of the day wandering the city. Montreal. As far as he could tell, nobody had heard of Westeros and the only Wall of notoriety was made of brick. He sat on a park bench after a few hours and watched the world move around him, with Ghost panting at his feet.

Jon was nearly asleep when he heard a fight. Not ringing steel and iron, but unmistakable sounds of shouting and fists on flesh.

"Do that again!" one voice shouted. The accent was different than the one he'd heard all day, and the voice was male. "Come on, do that--"

"Leave him alone!" A woman's voice, accented. Jeanne-Marie's. Jon was up and running as soon as he recognized her.

He rounded the corner to see Jean-Paul, his nose bloodied, backed into a corner by a group of people. Jeanne-Marie stood by him with raised fists.

All turned and looked when they heard the clean, distinctive sound of Valyrian steel being drawn. Jon stood with Longclaw in both hands, waiting. Ghost bared his teeth. Everyone stood still.

Before Jon could move or speak, almost before he could even register the movement, hands grabbed him and he was lifted off his feet, moving so fast that he couldn't properly draw breath. He shut his eyes and held on to Longclaw to keep from vomiting.

"Our knight in shining canvas," Jeanne-Marie said when she'd slowed, letting go of him. Jon opened his eyes to find them back in front of the Beaubiers' building.

"Your dog could stand to lose some weight," grumbled Jean-Paul, catching up behind them with Ghost awkwardly in tow.

"Direwolf," Jon said, voice shaking almost as badly as his body. Ghost didn't look much better. "Gods, how did you...?"

The Beaubiers looked at each other, Jeanne-Marie smoothing back her hair. "Maybe we should go inside," Jean-Paul said, wiping at his face. The blood had smeared back as he--ran? _Flew?_ "I think we all need to have a long talk."

* * *

  


_Rickon_  


“Bad Shaggy,” Rickon said, pulling the wolf away from the light. It was hard. Shaggydog was bigger than he was.

He’d lost Osha. Or she’d lost him. Either way, he and Shaggy were alone here, hiding in the dark from all the people. Rickon had never seen so many people, all running around chickens.

Shaggy tugged again, growling. “Shaggy, _stop_ , Rickon said, yanking at the wolf’s thick black ruff as hard as he could. “We don’t want anyone to find us, remember?”

The wolf didn’t seem to remember, because he pulled Rickon forward so that he stumbled, skidding on the smooth floor. Rickon went sprawling, and he grunted as he re-opened already skinned knees and palms. “Now look what you’ve done,” he said angrily, hot tears in his eyes.

Shaggydog came back, circling around him, teeth out and snarling. Rickon sat up and wiped his face. “If anyone catches us, it’s your fault,” he told the direwolf.

“Poor dear, who’s looking for you?” asked a woman. Shaggy growled, and Rickon jumped, fumbling for the dragonglass arrowheads in his pocket. He held it out like a knife, even if the sharp parts cut into his hand and made it bleed more.

“Who are you?” he shouted.

The woman, small and with cloth over her hair, held up her hands and looked around nervously. “Shh,” she said. “Do you want someone to find us? They’ll take us all away if they do.”

Rickon felt his heart start to thump, even though he’d only been angry and not really that scared just a second ago. His hands shook. “Who are you?” he asked again, because Bran and Osha had told him that the Lannisters and Ironborn were looking for him and couldn’t be trusted.

“I’m Annalee,” she said. “I live here.”

He looked up, and Annalee laughed. “No, not in Grand Central,” she said, and Rickon felt a little calmer. “In there.” She waved behind her, and Rickon leaned over to see a little door that he hadn’t noticed. “In the secret passages under the subways.”

“Like a crypt?” Rickon asked, interested. “We hid in one of those! I saw my father.”

Annalee made a strange face, and Rickon thought of his dream of his father down at the end of the crypt, in the empty space where his tomb would be, and his face crumpled. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to--” she said, reaching out for him. Shaggydog whined, but didn’t bite her or even growl. Rickon let her take his hand.

“My father died,” he told her. “I think my brother did, too. I don’t know about my mother.”

“Is she here?” Annalee asked. “We can go look for her.”

Rickon shook his head. “Have you seen Osha? We were going to Skagos, and we saw unicorns and I ate some but they were bloody and mean, and―”

Annalee smiled, and Rickon smiled back, even though he wasn’t sure why she seemed to think that was funny. “Why don’t you come talk to my friends, and we’ll see what we can do.”

“Okay.” Annalee started walking back to the little door in the wall, and Rickon followed, still holding her hand. “Shaggydog, come.”

Shaggydog hesitated, but followed, his black fur disappearing into the shadows.

Rickon looked up at Annalee as he stepped into the darkness. “I brought us here from a long way away,” he told her.

“Oh, did you?” she asked, closing the door behind them. “I'd love to hear all about it.”


End file.
